To catch a predator: r. kelly

07.20.2017 6:07PM

R.Kelly released a statement on Monday denying the allegations of abuse and sexual misconduct in a recent report by Buzzfeed News. These aren’t his first allegations, and the probability of another underage teen coming forward is higher than a hen hatching an egg.

I’m sure if you’re a millennial you remember the allegations in the early 2000s that R. Kelly ‘peed on a girl’. We’ve all seen the episode of the Boondocks where R. Kelly goes to trial. While the allegations of ‘peeing on someone’ is something late night television allows us to find humor in, sexual assault on black women is real.

I’m not going to go into R. Kelly’s numerous court cases or the fact that he has opted to pay up anytime a woman speaks out. I’m not going to talk about how R. Kelly has spent years dodging the criminal justice system by forcing his victims to settle outside of court for an undisclosed amount. The real issue here is why we allow this to continue to happen. Do black women mean so little to us as a society that we refuse to see the real picture here?

Why have news, media, and society forgotten about the sexual abuse black women have endured, not only brutally throughout history, but today as well? 1 in 4 black girls will be sexually assaulted by the age of 18. Even though a rape is happening every 98 seconds in the U.S., only 1 out of every 15 black women report their sexual assault.

R. Kelly isn’t the only celebrity that has won his way through the justice system. These celebrities include, but are not limited to: Bill Cosby, Sean Kingston, and CeeLo Green. (The list can go on and on.) Not only are these celebrities using their fame to bypass their criminal acts against women, their fans refuse to believe they’re able to commit such crimes. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can read through R. Kelly’s replies to his tweets.

Is it accurate to call these people evil? The disrespect of the lives of victims does not amaze or surprise me though. When you live in a society that allows the lives of black women to seem unimportant, things like this are bound to repeat themselves.